Evaluation Learnings Search

Learning Description

Implementing a project in many widely dispersed, difficult to access localities is not advisable for reasons of efficiency and impact. The communities could have been supported more efficiently and effectively if they were closer together. If funding is available, replication can then gradually be carried out based on lessons learned and good practices in other areas.

Learning Description

Careful consideration of the challenges of working in encampments is necessary, especially those in classified forests. In such a situation an analysis of the context in each encampment community is needed as the size, challenges and opportunities vary a great deal between such communities.

Learning Description

Ensuring that project supported committees are more and directly anchored in functioning local social, child protection, and national Child Labor (CL) monitoring system is key to ensuring sustainability. Similar projects should have one component related to empowering local social services to contribute to increase sustainability.

Learning Description

Project flexibility to find solutions to practical realities that affected implementation is a promising practice. Escaping from strict project planning is important, acknowledging that the actual situation and challenges cannot always be predicted.

Learning Description

Persistence in awareness raising, even where there is strong initial resistance has led to success. Using a range of means, including involving traditional leaders, relying on active Community Child Protection Committee (CCPC), field staff, and visits from senior staff are useful in this regard. This is particularly true when accompanied by evidence of concrete and visible inputs to support communities in meeting their needs.

Learning Description

Youth direct participant target setting must take careful account of family and population sizes and youth migration patterns. Target setting for Child Labor (CL) projects needs to take more thorough account of the family size and the population of the communities, as well as outmigration trends, to avoid setting unrealistic targets. One of Mobilizing Community Action and Promoting Opportunities for Youth in Ghana’s Cocoa-Growing Communities Project's (MOCA’s) biggest challenges was to identify two youth ages 15–17 per household to meet the target number; this, in turn, increased the number of households with a child participant to be provided with Income Generating Activities (IGA) services.

Learning Description

Programs need to provide a diverse range of youth vocational training geared towards both existing and emerging market demands. The methodology employed in Mobilizing Community Action and Promoting Opportunities for Youth in Ghana’s Cocoa-Growing Communities Project's (MOCA’s) marketable skills assessment and the subsequent selection of training areas did not provide a sufficiently diverse range of existing and emerging skills areas with employment opportunity. Many youth in a given community trained in the same skill area, and the evaluation KIIs indicated that the market for dressmakers and hairdressers, for example, was not large enough to sustain their employment, with some graduates moving elsewhere to find work. Additionally, the labor market assessment was based largely on the perceived needs of the communities and the existing trades, and could have given more attention to emerging job markets in the communities and surrounding areas. Future project investments in training in growing trades and skill areas, as well as existing trades may enhance the trainees’ employment opportunities and develop human resources in the communities.

Learning Description

Vocational training interventions for youth engaged in, or at risk of, child labor need to be gender sensitive. Programs need to offer vocational skills training options that meet the needs and interests of both male and female youth, taking into account or addressing the prevailing gender norms in the community. Additionally, in Mobilizing Community Action and Promoting Opportunities for Youth in Ghana’s Cocoa-Growing Communities Project's (MOCA’s) experience, adolescent boys in the community were often already working in a range of paid jobs, and vocational training did not meet their needs. This suggests that additional interventions, such as Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) interventions at work, need to be offered in these or similar communities in the future to reach working youth at risk of child labor.

Learning Description

Strengths and limitations of community-based skills training (CVET) The evaluation team’s assessment of Mobilizing Community Action and Promoting Opportunities for Youth in Ghana’s Cocoa-Growing Communities Project's (MOCA’s) CVET model provides both positive and negative lessons. MOCA’s experience demonstrated that local tradespersons such as qualified dressmakers, welders, and carpenters can provide an acceptable quality of community based vocational training for youth, provided that incentives in the form of trainee fees are provided, either by an external agency or by the learners. The model requires intensive support for quality control through National Vocational Training Insititute (NVTI) or an external project. Critical factors in the quality and relevance of such training are the integration of soft skills (marketing, financial management) as well as sexual and reproductive health awareness training. The evaluation team found a consensus among trainers and learners that the duration of vocational skills training needs to be longer than six months to enable successful transition to work or self-employment for many trainees, given community expectations regarding acceptable skills and the degree of learner absenteeism. Community-based training should be one among a range of options. Limiting the training to skills that already had Master Craft Persons (MCPs) present in the community was a limiting factor on the range of options available.

Learning Description

Effective engagement with government partners strengthens technical support to vocational training and IGA interventions and promotes sustainability. Mobilizing Community Action and Promoting Opportunities for Youth in Ghana’s Cocoa-Growing Communities Project's (MOCA’s) approach to engaging with district level government partners—District Assemblies (DAs), Cocoa Board of Ghana (COCOBOD), Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA), and the National Board of Small Scale Industires (NBSSI)—achieved significant levels of partner involvement, with the benefit of strengthening technical implementation as well as supporting sustainability of the interventions. According to staff and DA representatives interviewed, the partnership strategies worked well overall, because the project ensured that the government partners and well as the communities and participants benefited from involvement in the project activities. MOCA engaged representatives of the district authorities in project activities in the development of MOCA communities’ Community Action Plans (CAPs), specifically through holding quarterly stakeholder meetings with CAP committees per district, where each presented their CAP for discussion. It was a significant achievement to secure such engagement in a context of scarce local government resources, and the project’s support for the transport costs of district authorities was a supportive factor. MOCA helped the DAs to link with the communities, and furthered tangible and social community development through inclusion of elements of the CAPs in district Medium Term Development Plans (MTDPs). The project also established a successful partnership with COCOBOD, to supply sustainable hybrid cocoa seedlings to the communities, and provide technical support to the MFS and community cocoa nurseries. While this partnership was not without some shortcomings in terms of COCOBOD’s on-time supply of seedlings, the partnership was aligned with the COCOBOD’s strategy of increasing the production of these seedlings (with shorter cocoa harvest time and pest resistance), to support the sustainability of the industry as well as its goal of creating a new generation of cocoa farmers. MoFA’s support to MOCA through its Women in Agricultural Development was key in introducing a variety of new crops to women Income Generating Activities (IGA) participants with training facilitated jointly with the MOCA Livelihood Specialist. The NBSSI was successfully engaged to conduct assessments of the Community-Based Vocational Education and training (CVET) trainees and assisted in development of the competency-based training curriculum. As noted, as part of the exit strategy is MOCA holding discussions with NBSSI to provide ongoing mentoring services, to support MOCA’s skills graduates in their transition to work following the project close.